How I See the People Around Me
by Sand-wolf579
Summary: My name is Wally West, and I don't exactly think of people and relationships the same way as others might. I have people that I don't get along with as much, and people that I love more than anything. You might be surprised at just who fits into which categories.
1. Villain

**A/N: It's been a long time since I've tried writing a story in first person, so if I slip up, you know why. Anyways, this just stemmed from the idea that Wally seriously has some messed up relationships, so why don't I just write about his thoughts about them? Sounds like fun, right? Obviously, I don't own Young Justice. Also, fair warning, you may not agree with the way that _I_ see Wally's relationships. Specifically who he sees as a villain, an uncle, and his cousins. I'm pretty sure we can all agree on the 'dad' and 'brothers' chapters, so I think we're set there. **

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_Wally's P.O.V._

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When I was younger there was a favorite game that the kids at school used to play during recess. The game was called Heroes and Villains. The rules were simple. Some kids were supposed to be the villains of the story, the bad guys, and some others were the heroes that had to try to save the citizens, who were played by the remaining children, from the villain. Everybody loved the game, and many of the kids joined in the fun every single day.

There was no assigned group of kids who were always the hero, and no set villains. It wasn't just the popular kids vs. the weirdos. We always used to take turns to make the game more fair. Despite that guideline though I was almost always a villain. Not because I was forced to be, no, I always volunteered for it.

Everybody played the game different ways, and some kids had a different style of playing a certain part than everybody else. I was just fine with that. I actually loved how much freedom we were allowing each other to have. But the thing was, I just didn't like the way that most of the other kids played villains. They weren't good enough.

Meaning they weren't bad enough.

Whenever almost anybody else was a villain they copied a bad guy that they had seen on tv or in a cartoon or something, because that was all they knew. Wally had fun laughing at the goofy way that the kids played the bad guys, but he always used to feel sick to his stomach when he remembered that _this_ was what other kids saw as villainous. Most of them were all still completely oblivious to the evil that was in some people's hearts.

I often envied them.

Because I didn't want to feel bad about all the other kids still having an innocence about them that I had long since lost, I began to volunteer to play the villain more and more. There were occasionally a few kids who complained about me playing the same part so much, but for the most part everybody was more than fine with it. All of the other kids seemed to agree that I made the best villain for our game.

Unlike everybody else who threatened to kidnap all the girls, take over the playground or make school last through the weekend, I actually played a _true_ villain. Not a real one though, because it was all still just a game, but I played somebody a lot more villainous and scary than anybody else did,, and for some reason all of the other kids went crazy for it.

One of my favorite schemes to play out, and one that the rest of the kids certainly enjoyed just as much, was something that I liked to call 'disappearing act'. Me and the rest of the kids who were supposed to be playing villains that day would lie low for a few minutes and then, when everybody else was least expecting it, we would strike. One by one we would lure the other kids away and basically hold them captive. There were so many kids that people barely noticed when one went missing in the middle of the game. Nobody knew who was going to be taken next, or just how many of them would end up missing until they were all found and saved. Everybody loved the thrill of the game.

The thing with that game, and all the other versions I played the villain as, I always lost in the end. Unlike everybody else, I didn't fight tooth and nail to win the game so I could have bragging rights for the day. Even though I always put on a good show and made sure that everybody had fun while also trying to scare them, in the end I always let the good guys win.

The other kids used to ask me all the time why I would do that. My only answer was that the heroes should always win. And that was that. Nobody ever asked for more of an answer, and nobody ever bothered to ask why I made such a good villain. Even if someone _had_ asked, I probably wouldn't have answered.

How could I possibly tell anybody that I actually knew a real life villain and that's where my inspiration came from? Even if I did, why would anybody believe me? Heck, I probably wouldn't have believed me. In fact, for years I lived in denial of the truth. I tried to tell myself that I was just being to emotional about everything, making a big deal about something that didn't really matter. I had convinced myself that it was my own fault, not _his_. I didn't want to hate him, so that was how I thought.

It took me years to finally accept that my father, Rudolph West, was a villain.

Now, that wasn't to say that he was a _super_ villain, because he wasn't. He never threatened to destroy entire cities, and I doubted that he had ever even laid eyes on a superhero, let alone fought one. Still, I knew that my father was a villain. I _had_ to think of him as a villain, or else I might go back to blaming myself for everything, and that wasn't okay.

After all, _nothing_ that my father had done had been my fault. It took years for my uncle to convince me of that, and I wasn't about to go back to how I was before.

I would _never_ go back to how I was before. I refused to be so terrified all the time. To be that defenseless kid who hated himself, because why should I like who I am when my own father seemed to despise me? I didn't want to have to lie to all of my teachers, friends and relatives all the time. I didn't want to pretend that I was happy and everything was okay when that couldn't be further from the truth.

I wouldn't let myself be put into that situation ever again. I wasn't going to let anybody hurt me the way that my father used to.

I would never let myself be abused again.

My childhood had been absolutely terrible. I can admit that now, since I'm no longer living in those circumstances and have no reason to pretend anymore. Every single day I would wake up and wish that life would just stop, that I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. The only reason I forced myself out of bed every morning was because at least if I went to school I would be given at least a few hours out of the house. A few hours away from _him_.

My dad had been a jerk. Not that I had ever told him that to his face, I wouldn't have dared to, for fear that he would kill me. That wasn't just an unfounded fear, my dad really _would_ probably kill me. Or, at the very least, hurt me so badly that I would wish that he _had_ killed me.

I always felt like I was walking on eggshells around my dad, or maybe walking on broken glass would be a better phrase. I was never good enough for my dad, he made that much clear. Everything I did seemed to be wrong in his eyes. Even just the fact that I had red hair seemed to infuriate him more than was reasonable. I couldn't count the number of times that he had punished me for having the wrong color of hair, for being such a freak of nature.

His words and beatings, as well as the fact that I was the only redhead in the entire school, had convinced me that he was right, that I really was a freak of nature. It wasn't until I got older did I actually realize that my aunt Iris, my dad's sister, also had red hair, and he never called _her_ a freak of nature. It was around that time that I begun to realize that my dad was just looking for faults. He was looking for a reason to hate me, an excuse to beat me until I couldn't move.

He was trying to rationalize what he was doing, but it didn't matter what excuses he came up with. It was still wrong. I know that now. It is never okay to hurt a child, or anybody. Especially not to the extent that my father did.

Now, I would never go as far as to say that my father was inherently evil. I don't actually believe that _anybody_ is truly evil. Some people are just bigger jerks than others. But, if I had pick somebody to be the villain in the story of my life, I would definitely choose my father without thinking twice about it.

I don't hate him, I don't think I could ever truly hate anybody. I haven't forgiven him for the hell he put me through, and I probably never will, but that doesn't mean that I hate him. After all, he is still my father, even though I desperately wish that he wasn't. Still, I can't decide who I'm related to, nobody can, but I can decide how I feel about it and who I see as my family. And even though this may seem kind of harsh to some, I'm going to say it anyways; My father is not a part of my family. Not even close.

My father's name is Rudolph West, and he is my own personal villain

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 **A/N: I seriously have no idea how understandable this was. Hopefully it made sense. Coming up next: Dad.**


	2. Dad

**A/N: This one probably won't be as controversial as the last chapter. I'm pretty sure there are many people who can agree on this. So let's jump right in on Wally's thoughts on his 'dad'. To be honest, I was wanting to have this chapter be later, because it is probably the most important relationship in Wally's life, but I think that to properly talk about who he sees as an uncle and cousins figures we need to understand who he sees as his dad, so this chapter had to come before them.**

 **This chapter isn't my best work. I think it's okay, I just wanted to have _more_...I just couldn't figure out what exactly I wanted or how to write it, so I just settled for this. It doesn't go as deep as I would have liked it to, but it's good enough and definitely gets the point across.**

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When I was younger I always used to get confused by just how many different words the other kids at school had for 'father'. I never understood it. In my home, 'father' was the only term that was appropriate, and I always got punished for even _thinking_ of calling my father anything else. And yet the other kids at school seemed to have endless amounts of titles to give to their fathers. The most common word that almost everybody used was 'dad'.

I never exactly saw a problem with the word 'dad', after all, it was just a word. It just seemed much less formal than 'father' was, and maybe the informalness worked for some families, it just didn't for mine. Still, there was something about the word 'dad' that somehow made it seem different than 'father', and I wanted to understand why.

I decided to ask one of the girl's in my class, Courtney, about it. If anybody understood the difference between the words 'dad' and 'father', she did. Courtney's parents were divorced and she lived mostly with her mom and step-dad, but she did spend every other weekend and the majority of summer vacation with her birth dad. The only thing that confused me about Courtney's situation was that she always called her real dad 'father' while her step dad was the one that somehow got the honor of being called 'dad'.

I asked her why that was once, and Courtney explained it to me like it should have been obvious. "I love my father, but he just wasn't there for me like my dad was." Courtney said. "My dad is the one who helped me with my homework and let me sleep with him after I had a nightmare. My dad has always been there for me, even when I'm staying with my father my dad still made it clear that he loved me with phone calls and letters. That's why I call him dad."

I thought about Courtney's words for a long time. I just couldn't understand it, so I pushed it to the back of my mind. It wasn't until a few years later, during the first time that I had ever spent the entire summer with my aunt Iris and her husband that I realized what Courtney was talking about.

Before that summer I knew that I liked my uncle Barry, I knew that he was a nice guy, but I hadn't realized how great a man he was and just how much he cared about me.

That summer changed my life, completely for the better. Even though I was just their guest, my aunt and uncle made me feel more at home there than I ever had in my life. Before then I hadn't ever known what an actual family was like. It took me a few weeks to get used to the movie nights and bonding time. Eating dinner together as a family was a completely foreign concept to me, and so was the fact that there was always food readily available for me to have, whenever I felt like having it.

It was definitely a strange experience, but it was still the best summer of my life. For the first time I actually felt like I had a family. It was only after I accepted that did I realize just how great a family my aunt and uncle were, especially my uncle.

Barry wasn't even related to me by blood. He didn't have to care about me, but he did. Uncle Barry was the one who got me interested in science and he patiently walked me through what to do with a chemistry set. Uncle Barry was the one who made me feel okay about being such a huge fan of the Flash. Even after a long day at work or and exhausting 'volunteer' job uncle Barry would always find the time to tell me the Flash's latest adventure. He even took me on my first trip to The Flash Museum.

Uncle Barry was more than just the person who I could bond with over shared interests. He was somebody that I actually felt like I could talk to, about anything...alright, almost anything. I didn't actually tell Barry about what was going on at home with my dad, but that was a more complicated topic. I _did_ however tell him about being bullied at school, and he helped me out with that. Barry didn't run over to my school and threaten the kids who were picking on me, but he gave me some advice that has stuck with me to this day.

"Kids can be mean." Barry had told me. "And, to be honest, adults can be too. The important thing to remember is that if someone says something bad about you, they're wrong. Even if what they say is true, they're still wrong, and you shouldn't listen to them. It doesn't matter what anybody else says or thinks about you. All that matters is how you think about yourself." Uncle Barry was the one who taught me that _everybody_ deserves some kindness in their lives, even bullies...and even me.

Uncle Barry was the one who made me feel okay about myself, even though it took a few years for it to happen, and I sometimes still struggle with it.

It was only after I realized that I really did see my uncle Barry as an important member of my family did I begin to consider what Courtney had told more years before. I had never truly forgotten her words, but it was only then that I actually understood them. My biological father would always be my father, even though I sometimes wished he wasn't, but he would _never_ deserve the title of being my dad.

That honor went to none other than Barry Allan. A man who was much more of a dad to me than my own father ever would be.

Even after that summer was over uncle Barry was still the one person that I knew I could count on. I was always able to call him when I just needed to talk to him, and even when he was too busy to talk right then he would always call me back. He could always tell when I needed to actually see him and he would always be there before I could even think to ask him.

I looked up to my uncle so much that I wanted to be just like him. I started thinking of becoming a forensic scientist, just like he was. After I learned that my uncle was the Flash I made the best and also stupidest decision of my life. I copied the experiment and circumstances that had given him super speed in the first place. It was definitely not my smartest idea ever, but it is one that I will never regret.

It was a miracle that I ended up getting powers at all. My uncle scolded me so much about it, which had scared me at first. I was used to people becoming violent and full of rage when they were angry or disappointed. My uncle wasn't like that. Sure, he had scolded me, a lot, but he also made it clear that it was just because he was worried about me, because he cared about me.

After I had recovered from the incident (which didn't take very long at all, thank goodness for super healing) my uncle Barry spent weeks showing me not just how to control my powers, but how to actually use them. I have no idea where I would even be today if Barry hadn't been there to help me through everything.

No matter what mistake I've made, or how stupid I've been, my uncle has showed me time and time again that he loves me, no matter what. Even when he knew that I was screwing up, he was still right there to help pick up the pieces when things when badly. My uncle Barry has showed me what it means to love somebody unconditionally. What it means to always be there, no matter what.

He has shown me that someone doesn't have to be a father to be the best dad in the world.

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 **A/N: I think this chapter is even shorter than the last one. I guess that's just how this whole story's going to be. Oh well, not everything I write has to end up being 25,000 + words. Anyways, the next chapter is 'uncle', which I'm actually really looking forward to. It's been a few months since I've written about one of my all-time favorite DC characters, so that should be fun.**


	3. Uncle

**A/N: Of course the longest chapter in this story so far is this one. What can I say? I absolutely love this character. Now, my decision on who Wally's 'uncle' would be is probably not the most popular opinion, but hey, maybe you agree with me. Wanna know who it is? I guess you'll just have to read and see.**

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My opinion about uncles has actually changed since I was a little kid. Back then the only uncle I had ever known was Barry, and he had always been good enough for me. I hadn't felt the need to look somebody to have as an uncle figure because I had an actual uncle. Why would I want to look for more?

When I was in high school though my way of thinking changed. It was a few months after I had begun to see Barry as more of a fatherly figure. It took me awhile, but I eventually began to think that I couldn't see Barry as both my uncle and my father figure, because uncles and dads are supposed to be two different people. Barry was my dad, I had no doubt in my mind about that, but I was then stuck with the task of finding out who my 'uncle' was.

Just like when I had been looking for answers about dads I talked to other kids in school about what they thought. They all seemed to know more about families and how they worked than I did. I asked a lot of kids about what their uncles were like, and I got so many different answers it was hard to keep track of them all. I had never realized just how many kinds of uncles there could be.

There were a lot of kids who said that they barely knew their uncles because their parents didn't get along with them. There were kids who had uncles who always seemed to be drunk. Uncles who were bums and jobless. Strict uncles who were more intimidating than the kids' parents. Easygoing uncles who couldn't care less about discipline. Fun uncles, scary uncles, criminal uncles, the list seemed to go on and on.

After hearing about all of the different possibilities on what an uncle could be like I spend a lot of time on my own, considering my possibilities. I knew from the very start that my 'uncle' would probably be somebody that is involved in Uncle Barry's 'other' job. It wasn't that I thought that being a hero was a requirement for any 'uncle', but they were just the men that I knew the best.

I didn't even consider any of the Green Lanterns. I just didn't know any of them all that well. All three of them seemed to be pretty cool guys, but none of them had what I was looking for (not that I knew _what_ I was looking for).

I only briefly thought about Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, and Superman. All three of them were amazing and I definitely got along with all of them, but they all seemed incredibly distant as well. I never knew what to think about any of them. Besides, they were all just a _little_ too intimidating for my taste, and they didn't even try to be.

Green Arrow was a pretty good candidate. I knew him pretty well because of how much time I spent with Roy. He was pretty fun, but not so goofy that he couldn't be taken seriously. Something about seeing him as an 'uncle' seemed kinda weird to me though. Maybe it was because he was already Oliver's uncle figure and I knew I couldn't compete with that and I didn't want to.

Technically, Batman was an option, but an almost laughable one. Batman was and always would be Dick's, and only Dick's...until he took in more kids. Still, I wasn't about to step into my best friend's territory. Batman was Dick's and nobody else's. Besides, he was a little too serious and pessimistic for my taste.

The more I thought about it the more my mind kept on going back to one person in particular. He didn't get along with Uncle Barry, _at all._ He was somehow both easygoing and strict at the same time. He took his 'work' very seriously, but he knew as well as anybody how important it was to just kick back and enjoy yourself every once and awhile.

The man that I knew who seemed to personify so many different definitions of what it meant to be an uncle is actually one of the last people that anybody would expect. His real name is Leonard Snart, but the world knows him as Captain Cold.

Look, I know what you're thinking. Captain Cold is a super villain, a criminal, a bad guy. Why would I ever see him as anything more than that? Well, that's because he _is_ more than that, or at least he can be. Even when he doesn't realize it.

The thing about Len is that he's actually a cool guy...pun intended, of course. Len is a man with morals. He actually goes out of his way to keep people from getting hurt, especially women and children. For a kid who was abused by his father, that says a lot.

Also, Len may be a criminal, but I could never bring myself to hate him because he actually probably saved my life. Even though Uncle Barry and Aunt Iris were the ones who took me in after the whole mess with my father, they probably wouldn't have even found out about it if it weren't for Len. He recognized what nobody else did, because he went through the same thing himself when he was a kid. His dad had been just as bad as mine was, if not worse.

Len has also helped me out with some of the smaller stuff. He's the one who taught me how to flirt...yeah, I know that some people may not see that as a good thing. I haven't quite gotten down the whole being charming without looking like a total creeper thing down yet. Len's the one who's the master. He can get almost any woman to fall for his charms, even if they know exactly who he is.

He's not a massive jerk about it though. Len may have had many flings with so many different girls (I've heard some of the other Rogues call him a womanizer) but he doesn't just use any girls for his own selfish desires. He has a younger sister himself, and he knows how to treat a girl fairly without getting super serious with them. Maybe he's not the best guy to go to for relationship advice, but it felt super weird to ask Uncle Barry for dating advice, and Len is one of the only other guys I knew well enough to ask. At least Len is able to understand that as a teenager my goal when dating a girl is not necessarily to get married.

Len has also given me some pretty good advice for school. Not with the actual schooling, he has actually told me that he couldn't care less about formal education, but with the other kids. I had never really had troubles with bullies in elementary school, I was nice and funny, and other kids love that. The second I hit middle school though, that all changed. Suddenly it didn't matter how nice I was, all anybody noticed was that I had red hair, freckles, was shy and I liked to learn. That automatically made me a prime target for bullying.

Barry helped a little. He taught me how to ignore the bullies' hurtful words and how that can get some people to back off. However, that doesn't work on everybody, and once I started high school a couple of guys moved on to a more physical approach to bullying. By that time I already had my powers and knew that I couldn't fight back and expose my powers. I'm not saying that I just rolled over and dealt with whatever the other kids had in for me...No, actually, that's almost exactly what I did.

Needless to say, Len wasn't very happy when he found out what he was going on. He was actually pretty angry, and take it from me, you do not want to see Leonard Snart when he is angry. He lectured me pretty harshly about it, saying that he didn't help me get away from my father's abuse just so I could get beat up by some random kids. He wouldn't listen to any argument I had about how this wasn't anything serious and I dealt with much worse on a daily basis. He just argued back that just because Kid Flash fought villains did not make it okay for Wally West to be bullied by insecure teenagers.

He convinced me to stand up for myself, and was actually the guy who showed me that I could do that without fighting or using my powers. And, just as an extra precaution, he sent two of his Rogues, Pied Piper and Trickster, or, as I know them, Hartley Rathaway and James Jesse, to my school to keep an eye on me.

(Actually, he still says that he only did that because he wanted to spy on me or something. You know, the whole 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' thing. I know better though. He just doesn't want me to get hurt...unless the person hurting me is one of his Rogues, in which case I'm fair game just as long as they don't take things too far.)

Basically, Len's always had my back...except when he's shooting at it. He tries to pretend that he's not a good guy at all, that he always has some stupid evil motivations for helping me out, but I see right through him. I don't care what anybody else says, not even Uncle Barry or Len himself, I think he's a pretty okay guy, and even though he would never admit it (not in a million years), Leonard Snart definitely cares about me. He just doesn't know how to show it.

So, yeah, I kinda see him as my 'uncle'. Maybe I'll tell Len one day, just to tease him about it. I'm sure the other Rogues would have a blast with this information. (If you didn't already know, I have a very... _different_ relationship with my Rogues).

Leonard Snart is not the nicest man in the world, and he's far from being the greatest role model, and I'm okay with that. What he _is_ though is a man who fights for what he wants and who he cares about, and I respect that about him. I may not be able to count on him the way I can with Barry, but I still know that Len will do whatever he can to help...to an extant.

He's not perfect, and I expect or need that from him. All I'm really looking for from a fake uncle is somebody that is there even though he really doesn't need to be, and believe it or not, that man is Leonard Snart.

...Not that I'll ever tell Barry about this. He doesn't get along with Len the way I do, and I really doubt he'll take it very well.

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 **A/N: I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people who may disagree with me on this, but I had to do it. I absolutely love The Rogues, every single one of them. Especially Captain Cold. He's just so cool (hehe). I know that there are probably people out there who don't like the whole Rogue family thing that kinda includes Wally, but I** _ **know**_ **that I'm not the only one who sees their relationship this way. So if you enjoyed the chapter, rock on. If you didn't, well, I hope you'll stay tuned for the next chapter. I promise,** _ **Brothers**_ **will be something that I'm pretty sure a lot of us can agree on.**


	4. Brothers

**A/N: I know it's been awhile since I've updated. I just got distracted by other things. I know it's not much of an excuse, but it's the truth.**

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I don't have 'normal' relationships. I had known that much ever since I was a kid and saw that the _other_ kids families were much different than mine was. As soon as I realized that I was different in that way, I began to observe everybody else. Part of the reason was because I wanted to fit in and be a 'normal' kid. The main reason why I did this though was because I was a little jealous. My home life was a mess, and I just wanted to know what it _could_ be like.

The funny thing was, I wasn't the only one. There were tons of kids who were like me at school...well, not exactly, but they didn't really come from 'normal' families either. There were the kids whose parents were gay and they wondered what it was like to have a mom. There were the kids whose parents had been divorced all their lives who had no idea what it was like to be raised by two people rather than one. Plenty of kids had been raised by their grandparents or other relatives, and they didn't understand the relationships that everybody else had with _their_ grandparents, aunts, or uncles.

Once we hit the later years of junior high most kids my age had figured out that there wasn't really much of a point in questioning each other on what defined a _normal_ family. The thing was, there _wasn't_ one single set way of how a family should be, and no other way worked at all. The funny thing was that at that time we all figured out that actually very few kids were raised in 'normal' households. 'Normal', was actually considered the most strange.

All the kids at my age had basically stopped trying to figure out what was normal, but there was one aspect of a 'normal' family that just fascinated so many of us.

Siblings.

A lot of kids at my school were either a single child or their siblings were so much older or younger than them that it almost didn't count. We were _all_ fascinated by how siblings interacted with each other at school. Sometimes they completely ignored each other. Sometimes the older one took on the role of a kind of protector. Sometimes they were so close that it was often mistaken that they were dating.

A bunch of the guys at my school who were only children had taken to calling each other 'bro'. None of them had any siblings, and the closest thing that any of them would ever get to a brother was each other. They just kinda unofficially adopted each other as siblings.

A lot of the kids actually ended up doing this, and I was one of them...not with the kids at school though. No. At that time the others all just saw me as a loser who never took anything seriously. None of _those_ kids would ever see me as a 'bro', and the feeling was pretty much mutual.

I had friends outside of school though, and without even realizing it I began to think of two of them as my surrogate brothers. Roy Harper and Dick Grayson. They were my best friends. My fellow protégés. My partners in crime.

My brothers.

Unlike most of my other weird relationships, I don't bother to keep these ones to myself. We've never actually talked about it, but my friends know that I think of them as brothers, and I know that they feel the same way. The fact that we can tell without even having to say it just proves how strong our relationship actually is.

And the funny thing was, I didn't get along with either of them when we had first met.

Right off the bat none of us liked each other. Each of us was under the impression that the others thought that they were better than us, and in a way we were all kinda right.

Dick was the first fellow child hero that I had met, and man, was he a pain in the butt. Before I had met him I had thought that Robin was really amazing. He had been the first kid to really make a name for himself as a hero. After meeting him though, my admiration quickly died, because as impressive as he was, he was also an unbearably cocky little brat.

Dick _knew_ that he was the first kid hero, and in the beginning he used to act like that made him better than any of the others that came after him. Looking back I know that Dick was just messing around with us, but back then he just seemed incredibly arrogant. And what made things worse was that both me and Roy secretly thought that Dick had a point when he claimed he was better than us, because of the three of us _he_ was the one best at keeping his emotions in check during a fight. _And_ he had actually had prior experience/training before he had even started, which immediately put him leagues above me and Roy who, unfortunately, had a very awkward first few months as Kid Flash and Speedy.

Then there was Roy Harper. He was just a few years older than me, but those couple of years made all the difference. When I had first met him Roy had been at that awkward teenage phase of desperately wanting to fit in, and for a young hero that meant having an _in_ with the older generation of heroes, and that was kinda hard to do when you're always pushed together with the 'kids'.

Roy had not liked that very much at all. He was angry and bitter that he apparently wasn't being taken seriously, and it really wasn't a lot of fun to be around somebody who was just so mad all the time. Eventually though me and Dick both began to see the softy that Roy really was, and it was pretty easy to get along with him after that.

And as for me, well, when I had first started being Kid Flash I had only recently gotten my powers. I was still extremely excited and proud of my new abilities, and I _may_ had been a bit of a show off with them for the first few months. To Roy and Dick, neither of whom had powers, it probably felt like just a _bit_ of a slap in the face.

Thankfully though we all matured a little, or at least enough to not act like massively petty and jealous brats. Sure, it took a couple of kidnappings and missions that were unsupervised by our mentors to get there, but it happened eventually.

After we started getting along, suddenly we all just became best friends. Without even realizing it I began to think of Dick is my younger, annoying, and absolutely amazing genius brother who was _still_ a massive pain in the butt sometimes. And Roy was definitely the angry older brother who actually cared a lot more than he wanted me to think he did.

I'm actually incredibly lucky to have both Dick and Roy as friends. I know that they'll always have my back, whether we're we're heroes or civilians. Even if it's three in the morning I can still count on them. And that's not just me saying things. Both of them _have_ actually helped me out in the middle of the night, in rather embarrassing situations.

I've always been proud to say that I'm pretty good at school. Science is my best subject, though I'm pretty good at most everything else too...except English. I don't even know why, but I've always had a hard time with English class. There are just so many rules, which wouldn't be so bad if there weren't five conditions to go with every rule. It's impossible to remember it all.

So, I'm not so proud to say, I procrastinated doing my English assignments. Multiple times I would put them off so much that it would be the day before an essay is due and I haven't even started it. At these times the only person I can turn to is Dick, who is a bit of a word wizard (don't tell him I said that though. His made up words like 'traught' are still ridiculous).

No matter how many hours it would take, or how late we would have to stay up, Dick was always willing to help me just get an essay written that would get at least a decent grade. He's a good kid.

I've never had to go to Roy for homework help before. He helps me in a completely different way than Dick does.

Look, I know that I act all cocky and confident while I'm Kid Flash, but I've been a hero for awhile now, and I've seen some things that I wish I could forget. Hair raising, terrifying things that just stay with me and won't go away. During the day I'm able to push these things to the back of my mind. At night though, when I'm asleep, there's nothing I can do to keep these terrors from following me into my dreams and becoming nightmares.

I've always felt incredibly silly about this. I mean, I'm a superhero. I fight super villains every single day and help save the world a couple times a year. I shouldn't still be getting bothered by these things, but I do. And it's not even the supervillain stuff that bothers me, it's the _other_ stuff. The things that normal, supposably non-evil people have done.

It scares me just how bad people can be sometimes.

So, yeah, I've had a couple of nightmares that have kept me up the rest of the night. Roy found out by accident after I had one of them when he was crashing the night at my place. _My_ waking up woke _him_ up. He hadn't gotten annoyed or upset like I thought he would have. He didn't even try to be all sympathetic about it. Roy just stayed up and talked to me about whatever was going through his head until I fell asleep.

After Roy found out that these nightmares were a reoccurring thing, he made me swear that whenever I have one I was to call him up, no matter how late or early it was. I've reluctantly done just that, because it feels much better to talk to somebody than to just sit quietly by myself after a nightmare. I haven't told him what the nightmares are about, and he hasn't pushed for information. Roy doesn't feel the need to know why I'm upset. He's just willing to be there to help me calm down.

 _Both_ Roy and Dick are always there whenever I need them, and that's what makes them the best friends I've ever had, and probably _will_ ever have.

That's what makes them my brothers.

* * *

 **A/N: Well, that was fun. I don't know whether I made any of you uncomfortable with that line about how some siblings are so close that it's sometimes mistaken that they're dating. The funny thing is, that comes from real life. Me and two of my sisters have all been mistaken for my younger brother's girlfriend. Similarly two of my cousins, who aren't siblings, but they are cousins too, go to different schools but had the same school trip. While there the two of them just hung out with each other, and all of their friends wondered if the two of them were actually dating...yeah, my family's so close that holding hands and leaning against each other is just something that we do. It is kinda funny to be mistaken for boyfriend and girlfriend because of it though.**

 **Off the topic of my weird family, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. It was a little harder to write than I'd expected, because I'm used to writing bromance stuff, and as my personal opinion is that bromance is the line separating friendship and romance, it was a little weird. I had to figure out how to write this bromance without, you know, going into the 'mance' stuff. Anyways, the next and last chapter is 'cousins', and since we all know who 'Uncle' is, I don't think it should be all that shocking who it's going to be about.**


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